In today’s best of edition of The Heartland Daily Podcast, Adam Andrzejewski, founder of OpenTheBooks.com joins Environment & Climate News managing editor H. Sterling Burnett to discuss the new oversight report on the spending of the Environmental Protection Agency.

One of the most ambitious efforts to replicate real-world competition in the Affordable Care Act has proven to be a growing failure. In an attempt to increase competition in the healthcare market and on the new health insurance exchanges, ACA established a program to assist in the creation of new private nonprofit health insurers, known as consumer oriented and operated plans.

Chicago faces a significant and growing public pension problem. Instead of tackling the problem head-on by holding down cost increases, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel proposes several new or expanded taxes, which he says will slow down the debt growth from the revenue end. Emanuel’s half-billion-dollar property tax hike is getting most of the headlines, but he has also been pushing for taxes on e-cigarettes, ridesharing, and cloud computing.

As ComEd rolls out 4,000,000 Smart Meters in an effort to “modernize the electricity grid,” many Illinois residents are pushing for a no-cost or at least low-cost option to keep their existing analog meters. Instead of benefits to the consumer, these residents see risks and increased electricity bills associated with digital Smart Meters. They are not alone.

“Buy locally” is among the most foolish edicts in the long list of commandments from today’s environmental movement. Local sourcing is proposed by our universities as the solution for saving the rain forests, reducing pollution and halting global warming. We’d expect such advice from an out-of-touch grandparent, but not from our intellectual leaders.

The collateral damage is beginning to pile up from the FCC’s February decision to trigger Title II telephone utility regulation of the Internet. Long called the “nuclear” option, the FCC preemptively triggered Title II Internet regulation ostensibly to prevent potential new net neutrality problems, which the FCC admits it can’t yet identify.

A recent study of eminent domain takings and their associated state and local government tax revenues suggests buying grandma’s farmhouse to make room for a strip mall isn’t the automatic economic boon it’s claimed to be, leaving some wondering if the use of eminent domain as an economic booster is ethical.

A few years ago, the satirical publication, The Onion ran an article under the headline “98 Percent of US Commuters Favor Public Transit for Others.” The spoof cited a mythical press release by the American Public Transit Association (APTA), in which Lance Holland of Anaheim, California said “Expanding mass transit isn’t just a good idea, it’s a necessity,” Holland said. “My drive to work is unbelievable. I spend more than two hours stuck in 12 lanes of traffic. It’s about time somebody did something to get some of these other cars off the road.”

In 2011, numerous local-government special-interest groups and elected officials fought against Gov. John Kasich’s proposed reduction to the Local Government Fund, a pool of taxpayers’ money collected by the state government and redistributed to local governments’ general revenue funds.

The time is right to refocus school reform on practical objectives that can be achieved in local communities. Fortunately, a new online tool can empower parents and local school boards to work in unison toward an important common goal: ensuring third-graders have learned to read.

In rural areas, there is often a heated debate over economic development that essentially boils down to a choice between industrial jobs and tourism jobs. Both come with advantages and disadvantages, but to pit these two sectors against each other in an either-or discussion is a false dichotomy. My hometown provides a good example of how industry and tourism can coexist.

Americans recently celebrated Independence Day—the day the Continental Congress formally adopted the Declaration of Independence and announced the 13 American colonies regarded themselves as sovereign states no longer part of the British Empire and subject to its rules and taxes.